December 13, 2018 – At approximately 11:00 am, a bomb threat was received via email to a County Office. The Sheriff’s Office and County Administration was promptly notified of the email and an initial sweep of the building was conducted to locate any suspicious objects. The content of the email was very broad and not descriptively directed at any Yuma County Government building specifically. The threat did, however, state that the device would be activated should an evacuation of the building occur.
Due to the nature of the email, it was decided that it was most prudent to not immediately evacuate the Courthouse or any other County buildings. Immediate contact was made with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI reported that the same email was being distributed to schools, healthcare facilities, and other government offices around the state the same morning, and that the threat was unsubstantiated.
The Sheriff’s Office and County Administration activated the Yuma County Office of Emergency Management to notify Yuma County schools and healthcare facilities of the information should they receive the same threat. All County Offices and Departments were notified of the incident, and instructed to inspect their immediate work areas for anything out of the ordinary. That inspection did not yield anything unusual.
The Yuma County Courthouse, Department of Health and Human Services, and Road and Bridge Department maintained normal operations throughout the day. At the time of the drafting of this press release, this same email threat has been distributed to organizations in seventeen states and is now being investigated by a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Task Force. Any other entities in Yuma County receiving the same email are instructed to not delete the email and contact your local law enforcement agency immediately so that the information may be properly forwarded onto the FBI for further investigation.